Stepping on the Demoness to become the strongest

After receiving the message, the girls immediately began packing up their things, preparing to head out.

Anna was of course overjoyed, but due to others being present, she couldn't throw herself into Yan Yu's arms for a few kisses, so she happily went about packing.

"Where's your mom?" Yan Yu asked Chen Lingyun as he stopped her.

"Out shopping, she'll be back soon," Chen Lingyun replied.

"No time to wait! You call her later," Yan Yu decisively said, "Xie Ruoxi, you come with us too."

"Eh, I have to go too?" Xie Ruoxi asked in surprise, "I haven't mastered sound transmission into secrecy yet..."

"Nonsense! You'll learn on the way!" Yan Yu glared and scolded, "Swords! Elixir Medicines! Change of clothes! Take everything you can, five minutes enough? If not, you have three!"

"Right away, right away!" Xie Ruoxi hurried upstairs.

"Yan Yu, the vehicle is parked outside!" Lin Ning called from the door.

It wasn't the business van Chen Lingyun had ordered, but a troop transport vehicle, indicating that the Privy Council had deemed the situation extremely urgent and was requiring the Zhenhai Team to head north overnight.

Watching the girls in the living room ready to go, Yan Yu called upstairs:

"Are you ready?!"

"Didn't you say you'd give me five minutes..." came Xie Ruoxi's cry-baby voice from upstairs.

"Lin Ning, go give her a hand," Yan Yu made a snap decision.

Lin Ning, acting quickly as well, employed the Shifting Technique and dashed to the second floor; then faint shouts of "You don't need to bring this" and "You don't need that either" were heard.

Everyone quickly packed their things and rushed onto the troop transport vehicle, reaching Jinling Airport, boarding the plane, and taking off—all went smoothly and without interruption.

On the plane, Anna went to the back cabin to rest, not disturbing the team as they arranged their plans. Lin Ning lowered the projection screen, Su Yunjin turned on the projector, Chen Lingyun was adjusting the computer, when suddenly she heard Yan Yu say:

"Your materials are useless, let me explain."

In his previous life, he had dealt the most with the people from the Yin Yang Bureau and could even say he "knew more about Onmyoji than current Onmyoji." As a result, the fragmented information Chen Lingyun had cobbled together indeed had no value to offer.

"Our opponents this time are the Giliya Bearmen and Onmyoji," Yan Yu gave a brief explanation, "We'll talk about the Giliya Bearmen later; let's start with the Onmyoji."

"The Kyoto Onmyo Academy adheres to elitism, with internal resources skewed towards top elites. They do not regulate the practice at the social level but require that local cultivators register and enter local Dao academies for cultivation, to be screened and promoted step by step, eventually aggregating at the Kyoto Onmyo Academy."

"To help you understand the distribution of their strength, I'll categorize the top cultivators from strongest to weakest into four tiers: T1, Liu Longtao; T2, Li Minghu, Zhou Hongyu; T3, Lin Ning; T4, other team cultivators..."

"Hold up, why am I ranked in T3?!" Lin Ning immediately protested, "You could have said T1 is super team leader level, T2 is team leader level, T3 is first-line team, T4 is second-line team! There's no need to name names as examples, right?"

"Fine," Yan Yu immediately agreed, "On the Onmyoji side, because of the elite training system, the strongest few are between team leader level and super team leader level, which is about T1.5. But there aren't many of them, so they likely won't send all of them here; I reckon sending one over as the leader should suffice."

"Due to the skewing of resources towards the elites, there is a serious talent gap below team leader level, which means there are very few at Lin Ning's level. Below that are the second-line teams, and there are actually far more Onmyoji in this range of strength than us because they do not regulate civilian practice; there's a large base of civilian Onmyoji forming the bottom layer of the pyramid.

As long as there are enough 'short' ones, you can find quite a few relatively 'tall' ones, get it?"

"So, their team leaders are a bit stronger than ours, but they're definitely not as strong as you," Su Yunjin summarized, "The rest of members are weaker than us, but far outnumber us, is that right?"

"That's correct," Yan Yu nodded and said, "So if we're to analyze the risk points, where does the risk lie in combating the Onmyoji?"

The girls exchanged glances for a moment before Chen Lingyun said at leisure:

"The biggest risk is that during team leader duels, facing numerous but slightly weaker enemies, we could be outnumbered and overwhelmed, leading to the collapse of our battle situation."

"Exactly," Yan Yu paused for a moment and continued, "Because the combat style of Onmyoji is very different from our domestic cultivators... You know what 'Jade-Smashing Tactics' are, right?"

"Whenever civilian practice regulation is lifted, there's an inevitable issue: too many Transcendents and not enough resources to go around. What do you do?"

"If this problem isn't solved, it will result in severe internal strife, and even lead to the subversion of order from the bottom up. The Yin Yang Bureau has designed a battle reward system; if their onmyoji want to advance in rank, they must exchange their military achievements for promotion on the battlefield."

"The so-called 'Jade-Smashing Tactics' involve treating the lower-ranked onmyoji as cannon fodder on the battlefield. As long as they survive, they get promoted and gain access to more resources. 'As long as it's jade, it's not afraid of breaking.'

"That…" Lin Ning opened her mouth, instinctively wanting to say "Isn't that like raising gu," but at the last moment changed it to "Won't they resist?"

"Why would they resist?" Zhao Yuanzhen asked curiously, "Only those who can fight and kill have status and resources. Isn't that very normal? I actually think that the system in our country is too lenient..."

"Shut up!" Yan Yu immediately shouted in interruption, "No one asked you!"

In fact, the governance structure of the Yin Yang Bureau is quite similar to that of the Demonic Sect, which has origins in exotic demonesses.

First and foremost, they focus on cultivating high-ranking cultivators to ensure their combat prowess can crush those at the lower ranks, creating an absolute deterrence and then using resources as bait to drive the lower ranks into the fray to fight desperately, continually depleting their overall strength to prevent them from becoming a threat to the upper echelons.

Of course, classical sects and modern society are different. Many strategies can be employed to manage a few thousand people without issue, but when it comes to hundreds of thousands, problems arise incessantly... The Yin Yang Bureau was only able to implement this system temporarily in the early stages.

In the later stages, it was internally sabotaged by Xie Daiwo, leading directly to its peak and subsequent decline... Therefore, liberating the control over folk cultivation practices inevitably leads to a bottomless abyss, and one must not harbor any delusions of good fortune.

"You don't need to worry about why they don't resist," Yan Yu said bluntly. "In any case, as long as you've faced them, you'll know that those onmyoji are like mad dogs with rabies. They'll fight to the death just to inflict a wound on you, even if it means dying the next second."

"To deal with this 'Jade-Smashing Tactics,' there's only one method: Kill! Don't hold back, don't be soft-hearted; kill them before they can harm you. Summed up in four words, 'eliminate on sight.' Don't test them, don't maneuver around—just kill with one sword strike upon encounter. If there are any problems, it's simply because you didn't kill quickly enough."

The girls looked at each other once more, only to hear Chen Lingyun add an explanation:

"The enemy is fearless and numerous; even if their individual strength isn't a match for ours, a siege situation is still dangerous. The best response is as the captain said, rely on efficient killing to tear through and disrupt their lines, to avoid being besieged. Everyone must absolutely not hold onto any wishful thinking, and be mentally prepared to act decisively and ruthlessly."

"Right," Yan Yu said seriously, as the matter was grave and thus didn't belittle the deputy captain's prestige as usual. "Next, I will explain how to kill."

"Their transcendent beings are all referred to as onmyoji. Their internal factions are quite diverse. We categorize them according to combat style. Those who specialize in swordsmanship are singled out and called 'samurai,' whose style is similar to our Sword Immortals—fast, reactive, and their simple and crude form of attack is slashing, but their swords can't fly.

So the main counter-strategy is to avoid close combat and cut them down from a distance."

"A target bearing a sword isn't necessarily a samurai; but if a target is without a sword, you can directly rule out the samurai profession. Then look at their offensive means—if they attack using various projectiles, they are called 'ninja,' similar to our assistant officers who use magical treasures for offense." Find your next read at My Virtual Library Empire

"Ninja have strong long-range suppressive capabilities, but unlike samurai, they don't have integrated offense and defense, which mainly depends on the type of magical treasure: ones with strong attacks tend to have weak defenses—kill them swiftly; ones with strong defenses tend to have weak attacks—control them, be careful to dodge and normally don't bother with them."

"If they aren't samurai or ninja, then they are onmyoji. Within the onmyoji, there are two main branches: one likes to use curse techniques, and the other is accustomed to using shikigami, directly corresponding to our spellcasters and envoys."

"Curse technique onmyoji have wide-ranging attacks and strong lethality, but virtually no defense. They are the type that needs to be prioritized and killed on any battlefield. Their perception is usually not sharp, and they are easiest to kill from the side or behind."

"Shikigami onmyoji, their combat style depends on the shikigami, and is often strange and abnormal. Don't try to kill the core person; they're sure to have self-preservation measures. First target the shikigami. A shikigami style onmyoji without shikigami is like a samurai without a sword—they pose no threat..."

When it came to "how to efficiently kill onmyoji," Yan Yu spoke with fervor and endless details, so much so that Lin Ning, who was good at memorizing, couldn't keep up and had to take out her recording pen to record. The more she listened, the more wrong it felt.

You know this way too well!

Before she had the chance to complain "How do you know so much," she only heard Yan Yu say:

"Of course, one must be strong oneself to forge metal."

"When facing a human wave tactic, the most important thing is mobility. The Shifting Technique offers mobility on a two-dimensional plane, but what to do when enemies surround you on all sides?"

"Therefore, we must completely master Sword Flight before the battle... All of us. Stop looking! That includes you, Xie Ruoxi!"

"But we're on an airplane, there's no way to practice here, right?" Lin Ning quickly objected, "What if the sword light pierces through the cabin?"

"Who says you can't practice?" Yan Yu said, puzzled, "Practicing Sword Control on an airplane is already the fastest method, okay?"

I practiced on an airplane in my past life. Now, let me show you what a mature teaching plan of the future is like.

As the girls looked on in bewildered silence, he walked to the door of the crew rest area, knocked, and said something that made everyone's face change:

"Comrade? Can someone help open the airplane cabin door?"